Dinner at Miller and Carter, Sevenoaks

Saving for a mortgage means Toby and I don’t get to treat ourselves as much as we used to so date night is limited to once a month. You could say we’re sacrificing the fancy dinners for meals at home. So when I was given the opportunity to try out one of the local steak restaurants, I couldn’t say no could I? Miller and Carter is just down the road from us and boast four stars on Tripadvisor so it made total sense for us to head down there for a meal.

On arrival, we were greeted by a large tudor style building overlooking a car park (paid for unfortunately but if you get there after six then it’s free I think) which took a few detours to find the entrance but we got there eventually! We were seated quickly in the upper part of the restaurant and had our own little booth tucked away in the corner which was nice to have a bit of privacy. Before we knew it our drinks were on the table and we had Courtney, our waitress for the evening, over to explain the menu. After working in hospitality for over five years, I can be a bit picky when it comes to front of house staff but she was so lovely, chatty and knew the menu back to front which is exactly what you want with your server!

The menu is pretty extensive for a steakhouse and after downloading the menu before and reading through it several times, I still had no clue what to order! I tend to prefer restaurants with a smaller menu as I feel like everything is better quality and cooked to order but everything just looked so damn good on the Miller and Carter menu.

For starters, we opted for the nachos and scallops which is a bit of a bizarre mix and if I had seen that on someone else’s table I would probably ask myself why anyone would order that combination of food for starters but it actually went down like a treat. The nachos were nachos. What else can you say about them? Still delicious though and the tortilla chips seemed homemade, not just like they were out of a packet (hopefully anyway). The scallops were even better and I wish I’d scoffed them all myself but sharing is caring and I couldn’t leave Toby without any! In hindsight, I don’t think we needed the sharing size nachos and scallops, we should’ve just stuck with the smaller portion of nachos so we didn’t fill ourselves up as much. Saying that, we did try our hardest to not eat all the nachos to save room for mains but it was impossible not to finish off that cheesey goodness!

Now for mains. I’m not going to lie, we seriously over-ordered and I think we both regretted that as soon as Courtney had put the order through. You know that moment when it dawns on you that there’s only two of you and you’ve ordered enough food for half of Sevenoaks? That’s exactly how we felt!

Toby and I are both huge steak lovers and a steakhouse is normally our first port of call when we go out for dinner so we couldn’t not order a steak could we? After much deliberation, we chose the butchers block which consisted of three cuts of meat (8oz of fillet, rump and ribeye), a brisket stuffed marrow bone, two portions of chips, onion loaf (yeah this confused me too – it’s basically straight onion rings), sauce for the steak, tomatoes, two lettuce wedges (aka enough lettuce for a family of four) and dressing.. All for under £60! That price for that amount of food is practically unheard of in Kent! So that’s what we went for, I chose to have bearnaise sauce with my steak and buttermilk ranch and croutons on my lettuce wedge whereas Toby opted for the peppercorn sauce and then blue cheese on his lettuce wedge as I stole his crouton idea!

But it doesn’t stop there. Because we can’t do anything by halves, we had to order even more didn’t we? *eye roll* Cue lobster mac n cheese, garlic broccoli and tempura lobster and prawns – none of which were necessary to our meal but when in Rome and all that. I do wish we hadn’t ordered any of that though just so we could entirely demolish the steak board without having any extras to chow down on as well but at least we know that for next time!

I’m going to be honest with you all as I normally am, this wasn’t the best steak I’ve ever had and was probably far from it. Maybe it was just down to the cuts of meat but we didn’t feel like the steaks were very juicy or tasty and Toby found the rump disappointing. Luckily, the rest of the food saved it because everything else was delicious and I wish I could’ve taken the mac n cheese home with me to finish off but we just felt a little let down by the steaks. That’s not to say we wouldn’t ever get a Miller and Carter steak again but we both agreed next time we’d just get one steak each and not a gazillion sides with it!

I’m not entirely sure how we managed to stomach pudding after guzzling three times our daily calorie intakes should be but somehow we did! Nothing really jumped out at us on the menu so we picked the tasting board and I’m actually really gutted we did because the creme brulee was so good I definitely would’ve loved to have my own portion! The lemon posset tart was also delicious and likewise, I would’ve smashed my own plate of that too! It was also the perfect size of each mini dessert to share with your friend or partner after a heavy meal like we had!

After letting our food go down for what felt like three hours, we quickly picked up the bill and scooted off home to try and overcome our food comas! I didn’t actually have time to thank Courtney before we left so if you’re reading this, thank you!

The burning question… Would I go back? Yeah absolutely but I wouldn’t say I’d go there in a hurry and I’d definitely be wiser about my menu choices! Everything seemed so reasonably priced and I can’t fault the atmosphere or service because we had such a lovely night and I think it would be the perfect place to go with a group of friends!

Since the team at Miller and Carter are so bloody generous, they’ve given me a £50 voucher to giveaway on my Instagram so if you’d like to treat yourself then head on over to enter. All you need to do is follow me, them and like the post for your chance to win!

Thank you so much to Miller and Carter for having me for the evening and letting me try out your menu and gifting me the voucher to giveaway!